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AGAINST THE CURRENT
The communities surrounding Geneva Lake in Southern Wisconsin cannot stand alone but must be wholly a part of the social current that eases its way out from the greater Chicago area to enjoy not Chicago experiences. This tourist faction or element, flowing around and through the local communities, like a slow-moving but unstoppable current keeps the tourist-driven economies around the wonder of Geneva Lake alive and robust economically and culturally. The money available from this body of well-wishing and reveling group of humans is truly diverse in size, culture, religion, and race, as opposed to the almost singularly Caucasian, rural, and solidly grounded body of beings dug into the very soil and elements in the Geneva Lake area.
In the early and mid-nineteen nineties, South Africa was an economic powerhouse that drove its massively successful economy and supported nearly seventeen of the fifty-two African countries that composed the continent. Apartheid ended and the African National Congress took over the country in 1994 and then the triumph of that freeing event began to decay as the economy of South Africa and the seventeen countries on the continent it supported began to fail. Today, in 2025, the African continent is considered nearly an economic wasteland, with none of the results of this happening being attributed to South Africa’s inability to stand against the current and hold its own as corrupt, tribal, and selfish leadership stepped in to replace what was a system of inequity and injustice. The replacement of a governmental system that was fair, equitable and just did nothing to help the country, or those other countries dependent upon it hold their own against a seemingly powerful and inexorable current that was dragging them down.
Williams Bay, Town of Linn, Town of Geneva, Walworth, Fontana, and Bloomfield can all be said to be supported by the City of Lake Geneva, in that it, much like South Africa in its time of great success, is the key economic attractor that provides more than sixty percent of the revenue that flows into the area around the lake and supports those other communities rather massively. The forces of the ‘river’s current’ are not the same, however, to allow a point-by-point comparison between the fate of South Africa and that of Lake Geneva. As opposed to surrendering to tribal rule and the lack of leadership that resulted in that country and continues to this day.
Lake Geneva is only a small city, where leadership remains strong. Whereas external forces were applied to bring about changes in South Africa however, external changes are also being mounted to affect Lake Geneva as well. An entirely new and unpredictable change in national political leadership means that the ‘current’ of the river of Chicago’s influence can increase or change in other unexpected ways. Can Lake Geneva’s leadership and the fiber of the surrounding rural populations be strong enough to whether the changes that can only be imagined at this point? When Africa’s economies began to fail after the change of government in South Africa the surrounding dependent economies could not stand against the current…a current that fell away rather than grew stronger.
Will Lake Geneva’s economic current from the south wither or grow stronger? Can that result be predicted? Not at this time? Will Lake Geneva and its brother and sister dependent children be flexible and elect strong leaders to stand against the coming current, or conversely, stand when such current falls away? Todd Krause is the strong mayor of Lake Geneva, and he has an equally strong and bright city council backing him. The leadership of the surrounding communities is also strong. Will these leaders be what makes a positive difference as the coming time of unknown and even unimaginable change descends on the area?